Vortrag im Rahmen einer CEREG (Centre d'études et de recherches sur l'espace germanophone)-Veranstaltung “Récits des origines”
The presentation engages with the discourses on ‘Lorrainians’ in Banat throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (until the early aftermath of the Second World War) and with the related ethnopolitical efforts to claim and assert a Lorrainian identification for (some) of the Germanophones in Banat largely known as Swabians. The point of reference of these discourses and efforts was the Lorrainian origin of some of the eighteenth-century settlers to
Habsburg Hungary. The presentation highlights that the preoccupations for Lorrainians in Banat were directly linked with the French-German conflict over the left bank of the Rhine in general and over Alsace-Lorraine in particular. Through its association with France, Lorrainian descent challenged the integration of Banat Swabians in the imagined pan-German community. However, emphasizing ancestry and claiming and asserting Lorrainianness meant resorting to an essentialist vocabulary of blood and kinship mostly associated with German ethnic politics. Shedding light on nineteenth- and (especially) twentieth-century Banat-Lorraine transregional connections, the presentation shows how the French-German entanglements extended to and resonated in the East of Europe, and argues that Banat Swabian history is connected with the French-German entangled history.